With the announcement this week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would relinquish her leadership post after leading House Democrats for two decades, she effectively began to close the book on a legacy that many would define as being one of the most powerful and polarizing figures in American politics, at least in our lifetimes.
And while the jockeying continues apace in Washington as potential successors and new leaders emerge, at InsideLowell, we thought it provided us with an opportunity to revisit when Pelosi visited the Mill City in June 2014.
Pelosi rolled into Lowell as part of a bus tour promoting a women’s economic agenda, courtesy of then-Congresswoman Niki Tsongas.
She set up with a contingent of other female legislators and parked her bus in the front lot at Middlesex Community College’s Cowan Center in Kearney Square.
At the event, attended by hundreds of locals, including many prominent women leaders, Pelosi told the crowd “We pride ourselves on being weavers, that we work at a loom, just as those women did in Lowell, Massachusetts so many years ago. And we weave in all of the thinking to build the strongest possible consensus.
The Lowell stop was part of Pelosi’s When Women Success, America Succeeds tour, during which she promised to fight for affordable child care and fair pay, including both raising the minimum wage and closing the pay gap between men and women.”
For her part, Tsongas, who has since retired from Congress to be replaced by current 3rd District Congresswoman Lori Trahan, said “if women don’t have a seat at the table, then we’re on the menu.”
Along with other members of Congress who joined Pelosi at the event was Massachusetts Fifth District Rep. Katherine Clark, who has emerged as one of the newest leaders in Congress.
Other local speakers at the rally included former Middlesex Community College President Carole Cowan, then Executive Vice-Chancellor and later Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney from UMass Lowell, Community Teamwork Inc.’s Executive Director Karen Frederick and Lawrence attorney Zoila Gomez.
After the packed parking lot rally, Pelosi then went across the street to MCC’s Federal Building to meet in the college’s Assembly Room with Greater Lowell community leaders.
Whatever comes next for Pelosi, it’s nice to know that Lowell contributed to a piece of the backstory of a political career for the history books.
